Dick left Kisame vastly unimpressed, scrambling to his feet and lunging inside the AI.
He HATED going inside intelligent, giant machines that could kill you when you weren't sure if they wanted to kill you or not.
Then he got inside, and stopped.
The man in the pilot's seat had been dead for a very long time. He was slim, not much taller than Duo. His bone structure was delicate, his eyes large in his face; larger, now, from the dry decay of a tomb.
Dick took a deep breath, laden with dust and stale with age. Then he slid along the wall, his boots leaving prints in the film on the floor. He knelt carefully, and when he spoke it was with the air of someone in a graveyard. "Duo? Hey, spacebrat. Come on. Let's get out of here, all right? We can go and--and you can sit in the sun, and I'll get--" he paused, looking at the body. "I'll get the pilot out of here." Dry, dead, and desiccated, the body couldn't weight much. "We can give him," not Duo, he couldn't even suggest it was Duo, even though it obviously was.
Alternate versions.
"--A decent burial," Dick continued, "and you can talk to your AI. Okay? Duo?" He brushed soft brown hair back behind the curve of an ear, barely touching, trying to both be there and give the kid room.
He really wished he'd dealt with the AI on his own. Somehow.